Back when I was in school teachers would always scare me with stories of how my exploits would end up in my permanent record. I believe this is it! – Geoff Fox

What’s Osama’s House Worth?

I’m not saying this is at the “no food, no phone, no motorcar, not a single luxury” level.

I can’t Zillow it and there are no “comps” so I’m stuck with the well publicized estimates of the value of Osama bin Laden’s million dollar “mansion.” in Abbotabad.

U.S. forces finally found al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden not in a mountain cave on Afghanistan’s border, but with his youngest wife in a million-dollar compound in a summer resort just over an hour’s drive from Pakistan’s capital, U.S. officials said. – Reuters

I’m not the only one who found it odd home prices in Pakistan… even in this summer resort city… would be that high.

two property professionals in Abbottabad – a quiet, military-dominated town – said that much of that was incorrect. Based on the size of the plot and the house, which was built in 2005, and using recent property sales as a guide, they estimated that it would fetch no more than $250,000 on the current market.

“Twenty million rupees, maximum,” said property dealer Muhammad Anwar, a 22-year veteran of the local market, at his Abbottabad office. “No swimming pool. This is not a posh area. We call it a middling area.”

I’m not saying this is at the “no food, no phone, no motorcar, not a single luxury” level, but it’s a house with exposed rebar on a dirt lot in a neighborhood that required 14 foot walls topped with barbed wire!

Right now I’m hoping it doesn’t turn into Pakistan’s equivalent of Graceland. It probably should have been demolished as the Seals were leaving.

I’m still wondering why the world’s most wanted man didn’t have an escape plan tunneled under the house, etc. and how they didn’t hear the helicopters coming… surely he had to know this day was coming.